Sunny Came Home
by Ally Quagmire
Summary: Sunny Baudelaire is no longer an innocent little girl... (chapter 2 up. finished.)
1. one

A/N – Hola! This is my first fic. It's a little bit morbid, and will get more so later. PG for 2 swears. Please review. And chapter 2 will be posted as soon as I get around to writing it.

Disclaimer – I don't own ASoUE, Mr. Snicket does. Except for James, he's my creation. Title/any lyrics I use are by Shawn Colvin ("Sunny Came Home" is the title of the song).

A rush of chilly winter air gusted through the door of the pub, startling the man in the corner. He glanced up from his writing, watching the young woman in the gray pea coat make her way across the dark, noisy room toward him. He leaned back and stretched as the woman sat down across the table across from him.

"Hello, Sunny," the man said, leaning forward to shake her hand. 

Sunny also leaned forward and took his hand. "Hello...your name is James?" 

"Names don't matter," the man replied with a wave. "So, you told me you were interested-"  

"Yes," Sunny nodded, reclining in her chair. "This schism business...tell me more."

The man gave her a small smile. "The schism...the noble organization of V.F.D...one side fighting fire, the other setting it...the dignified organization, so undignified in its division, so many years ago-" His eyes were glazed over as he spoke, but he abruptly stopped and looked at Sunny. His next two rapid-fire questions startled her. "How old are you? Where are your siblings?"

Sunny looked at him with mild surprise. "I'm 24, and I already mentioned to you that I haven't spoken to my siblings in a few years." 

"But the last you heard-tell me about them." 

Sunny sighed. "Violet, she graduated from college, and then she and Duncan got married-" 

"Quagmire?" the man asked suspiciously. 

"Yeah." 

"I thought we killed them off years ago. We burned that mansion down." 

Sunny shook her head. Her wavy auburn hair fell into her face, and she paused to brush it back. "Well, I don't know who told you that-all three of them survived. We met two of them at a boarding school, and the other one a while later." 

The man opened the notebook he had been writing in earlier and jotted something down. "Oh. What's Violet do?" 

Sunny rolled her eyes. "Guess. Oh, and guess what Klaus does too-that was a fucking idiotic question."  

The man looked a little taken aback. "Inventor, and-" 

"College professor," Sunny finished. "And then there's me. The baby of the Baudelaire family. Nobody _really_ fucking cares about me-my family's excommunicated me, my friends have all abandoned me-" 

"So to deal with it all, you've turned to fire? Typical," James replied.

"Exactly." Sunny leaned forward, closer to him. The man felt her staring at him, and he shifted uneasily. Sunny continued in a whisper. "Fire is the single most destructive force on Earth...it ruined my life all those years ago, and now I'm here to ruin _everyone else's_." 

The man couldn't believe what he was hearing. "But, are you su-"

"Positive." 

He sighed. "Meeting is tomorrow night. You can meet me at the corner of Washington and Main, we'll walk over together." 

"Okay," Sunny replied shortly. She stood up and silently left. As she disappeared into the evening darkness, another breeze blew through the pub, extinguishing the candle on the table where James now sat. He ran his fingers through his hair. 

"My God," he murmured, "what have I done?" 


	2. two

A/N - Ok, so I was going to have 3 chapters but I couldn't think of ideas for the second chapter, so this is the second formerly third chapter as the second chapter. Did I confuse you yet? Good. This chapter is rather morbid. It even creeped me out as I wrote it. So, enjoy (or something).

And huge thanks to my reviewers! **Hermione Baudelaire**, **TaNsHi**, **EvilMicella, kittykat,** and **Kate **(shmeeble to you too!).

_Words in italics are lyrics._

It was a cold night. Typical for early December, but it still stung Sunny's face as she climbed out of the car on the dark street. There had been a power failure the night before. That would make everything much easier. She looked back into the car and glanced at the time. The luminescent green read 5:48 am. The sun would rise soon. They had better get this over with.

"Hey, S, some help over here?"

She turned and walked back to the trunk, where James and Esmé stood. Sunny was still in shock that Esmé Squalor was not only alive, but as menacingly beautiful as ever. And, she had completely accepted Sunny as a member of V.F.D., despite the Baudelaire family connections.

Steve's voice brought her back to reality as he jumped out of the backseat. "Sun! Take this," he called. Slowly she made her way to him. Steve dropped a pile of branches into her arms, along with a box of matches. "Go...you and James have some fun now. We'll follow behind."

Both James and Sunny nodded solemnly, then walked up the street. Everything was still and quiet. It was a fancy neighborhood. Ornamental shrubs dotted the green lawns, in front of large mansions. Brick gateways stood at the end of the driveways. A small bronze and gold plate was embedded into each post, telling the number and name of each resident. After a minute of walking, Sunny spotted it.

"Here," she whispered, gesturing with her flashlight to the nameplate.

James ran his fingers over the raised letters. "Quagmire," he murmured, and they both nodded. It was now or never. They crept around to the side where Sunny remembered the master bedroom was. It was lightening outside, with gray clouds streaked across the sky.

They reached the window. "Well," James muttered, "go on, take the screen off. It'll make the job easier."

Sunny easily detached the screen, tossing it behind her. She held a match in her left hand, a stick in her right. In the slowly brightening morning, she could see more clearly into the room, and gasped softly at what she saw.

Duncan and Violet lay sleeping in their bed, which Sunny had expected. What had made her gasp were two small details. First, between them lay two young children, obviously scared by the previous night's electrical outage. Not only that, but Violet's arm lay across her stomach, and Sunny saw that she was pregnant.

She could not do this. Not destroy this perfectly happy family.

As though the night itself could hear her thoughts, she heard a quiet reply.

_"Count the years you always knew it...strike the match, go on and do it..."_

Sunny looked at the match and gulped. She was going to do it. In less time than it took for her to think, she had struck the match, lit the stick on fire, shoved the window open, and thrown it in. The flame quietly flickered on the edge of the blanket. She then lost all control, mindlessly striking matches and throwing them feverishly into the room.

"Wow, S, you're going all-out, eh?" James stood behind her, Esmé by his side. "The rest of the house is going up, too," Esmé added, smiling. "Go, look."

Sunny walked, breathlessly, to the front yard.

She couldn't bear to look.

Sunny ran as fast as her legs would carry her around the house, past a confused looking Steve. She began to scale the brick chimney, focused on one thought.

_Days go by, I'm hypnotized_

_I'm walking on a wire_

_I'll close my eyes and fly out of my mind_

_Into the fire..._

Sunny stood on the edge of the chimney, staring down into the fiery mass below her.

This was what her life had come to.

It felt strangely exhilarating.

And she no longer cared.

James, Esmé, and Steve saw it happen. In later years, they all recalled how surreal it looked: A dark body, silhouetted against the sunrise, flying in a graceful arc down into the smoky orange mass below.

She was gone.

_Light the sky and hold on tight_

_The world is burning down_

_She's out there on her own and she's alright..._

_Sunny came home._


End file.
